An ethics of dissensus : postmodernity, feminism, and the politics of radical democracy

What kind of challenge does sexual and racial difference pose for postmodern ethics? What is the relation between ethical obligation and feminist interpretations of embodiment, passion, and eros? How can we negotiate between ethical responsibility for the Other and democratic struggles against domination, injustice, and inequality, on the one hand, and internal conflicts within the subject, on the other? What are the implications of postmodern ethics for the agonistic politics of radical democracy? We cannot address such questions, Ziarek argues, without putting into dialogue discourses that have hitherto been segregated: postmodern ethics, feminism, race theory, and the idea of radical democracy. Addressing a constellation of diverse thinkers―including Emmanuel Levinas, Patricia Williams, Jean-François Lyotard, Michel Foucault, Frantz Fanon, Julia Kristeva, and Luce Irigaray―the author proposes a new conception of ethics, an ethics of dissensus that rethinks the relation between freedom and obligation in a double context of embodiment and antagonism. As the unavoidable yet productive dissonance among antagonism, freedom, and obligation suggests, the ethics of dissensus seeks not to transcend politics but to articulate the difficult role of responsibility and freedom in democratic struggles against racist and sexist oppression. Opposing the conservative political work of privatized moral discourse that reduces social antagonism to the apolitical experience of good and evil, the ethics of dissensus calls into question not only the depoliticized subject of ethics but also the disembodied notions of citizenship, rights, and democratic community. Contents......Page 8 Acknowledgments......Page 10 INTRODUCTION An Ethics of Dissensus: Postmodernity, Feminism, and the Politics of Radical Democracy......Page 14 1. Toward an Experimental Ethos of Becoming: From Docile Bodies to Ethical Agency......Page 28 Between the Visible and the Articulable: On the Causality of Power and the Materialization of Bodies......Page 30 The Genealogical Critique of the Modern Soul: Radical Finitude, Subjectivity, and Resistance......Page 39 Toward an Ethos of Becoming: An Aesthetic of Existence, Eroticism, and the Invention of the New Modes of Life......Page 46 2. Ethical Responsibility, Eros, and the Politics of Race and Rights......Page 60 The Ethical Passions of Emmanuel Levinas......Page 61 Ethics, Race, and Rights: Reflections on the Politics of Radical Democracy......Page 75 The Question of the Community/Community in Question: Difference, Fraternity, and Affect......Page 88 3. Toward an Ethics of Dissensus: Lyotard's Agonistic Politics and the Pursuit of Justice......Page 96 Lyotard's Pragmatics of Radical Democracy: Antagonism, Hegemony, Differend......Page 97 Every Wrong Ought to Be Expressed: Signs of History, The Necessity of Judging, and the Force of Obligation......Page 107 Toward a Feminist Ethics of Dissensus: The Sexed Body as an Analogon of Justice......Page 117 4. The Libidinal Economy of Power, Democracy, and the Ethics of Psychoanalysis......Page 130 Racist Fantasies: The Libidinal Politics of Nationalism and Fascism......Page 131 Kristeva's Ethics: The Negativization of Narcissism and the Respect for the Irreconcilable......Page 139 Women's Time and the Politics of Radical Democracy......Page 150 5. Labor of the Negative: The Impossible Ethics of Sexual Difference and the Politics of Radical Democracy......Page 164 The Negative and the Impossible: The Disjunctive Temporality of Sexual Difference......Page 165 Labor of Love, Labor of the Negative: An Ethical Model of Erotic Relations......Page 176 "Between Passion and Civility": Toward a Democratic Culture of Difference......Page 185 6. Postmodern Blackness/Visionary Feminism: Paradigms of Subjectivity, Community, and Ethics in bell hooks's Work......Page 196 The Politics of Radical Black Subjectivity: Performativity, Trauma, and the Ethos of Recovery......Page 198 "I Wish They Stopped Talking About the Other": The Ethos of Becoming and Social Accountability......Page 209 Toward a "Beloved Community": Hybridity, Solidarity, and the Politics of Multicultural Democracy......Page 218 Afterword......Page 230 INTRODUCTION......Page 238 CHAPTER 1......Page 242 CHAPTER 2......Page 250 CHAPTER 3......Page 257 CHAPTER 4......Page 261 CHAPTER 5......Page 268 CHAPTER 6......Page 278 Index......Page 290 'Ziarek has produced one of the most sensitive, thoughtful, original, and quietly provocative texts I know in the broad areas of contemporary philosophy and sexual and racial politics. . . . Trained in comparative literature and literary studies, she is equally at home in the most difficult and contentious of philosophical texts.'-Elizabeth Grosz, State University of New York, Buffalo
'Original, carefully argued, and beautifully written, this book is one of the first sustained attempts to think through the relationship between feminist ethics and feminist politics. Ziarek’s nuanced readings of central figures in current debates in postmodern ethics provide not only new ways of interpreting their work but also new directions for ethical theory.'-Kelly Oliver, SUNY-Stony Brook Addressing a constellation of diverse thinkers including Emmanuel Levinas, Patricia Williams, Michel Foucault and Luce Irigaray, this book proposes a conception of ethics - an ethics of dissensus that rethinks the relation between freedom and obligation in the context of embodiment and antagonism.